The new cultivar is a product of a planned breeding program, with the objective to produce new Mandevilla varieties for small pot production. The new variety resulted from a crossing performed in August 2003 in Hawthorne, Fla. The seed and pollen parent is the Mandevilla hybrid ‘Red Velvet’, U.S. Plant Pat. No. 12,238. The new variety was selected April 2006, by the inventor, John Gray in a commercial nursery in Hawthorne, Fla.
Asexual reproduction of the new cultivar ‘Scarlet Velvet’ by vegetative cuttings was performed at a commercial nursery in Hawthorne, Fla. in June 2006 and has shown that the unique features of this cultivar are stable and reproduced true to type on successive generations.